Reflections on Ends

Reflections on Ends

Growing up in a Pastor’s home, then being in Pastoral Ministry for some 30 years, I have seen and been a part of many funerals.  Many of them were acquaintances, some were close friends, some were strangers, some long time coworkers and teammates.

Some of those funerals were for people who I had no idea if their future held a hope for heaven.  Some were for people who had great hope for a life beyond life due to their faith and personal relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

I have been at funerals for my grandparents, but this December was a first for a close family member.  Dad was ready to go.  He had asked that we pray that he go ‘home’ for the last couple of years.  Yet his death on December second had a profound impact on me in two very different ways. 

The first impact was the calmness by which Dad faced his own death.  He was not afraid, he was not stressed out, even in his moment of death, there was a kind of relaxed peace about him.  I have talked many times in sermons and in funeral devotions about the peace we can have as we face the reality of death when we know what lies beyond death.  It was an amazing display of this reality to watch as he faced this last step of life with the same kind of calm assurance he might have facing any of life’s steps. (Actually he was WAY more uptight doing my wedding ceremony then he was facing his own death!)

The second impact was my own calmness about this whole process of death, and funerals and the like that came out of my own hope.  It was just so clear to me that our shared hope in God was such a comfort, such a deep kind of peace, that even the tragedy of death could not shake that.  For that hope made the tragedy mine, or more precisely ours who were left behind rather than my fathers.  He was beyond suffering, beyond pain, beyond the heartbreak and sorrows of life.  Our grief then, needed to be recognized as being for us and us alone.  It was not necessary or even logical to grieve for him, for he has moved on to something better.  We only needed to deal with how we were going to now face the reality of a new chapter in our own lives as a result of his being gone.

The key was that shared hope we had life here is but a stepping stone to life in the presence of God.

A few days after the memorial service was the widely purported ‘end of the world’ on December 22^nd.   I found myself thinking, “Bring it On!”  What have we to fear?  How might not the hope we have be as real in that situation as in the facing of a death a few days before?

Now we face the passing of a year and the beginning of a new year.  For me, it is a new year filled with hope, for as the song says, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able, to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.”

With that thought, I can respond with enthusiasm to the often repeated request “Have a great New year!”  And I will wish that on each of you as well.

Where Do Leaders Come From?

Where Do Leaders Come From?

Last week I had the privilege of sitting in on a “Leadership Think Tank” where a group of our district’s leaders were gathering to talk about and think about developing quality leaders for the future of the church.

As I sat in on the discussions, I found myself thinking about how we in the church recruit leaders.

When I was growing up, we had yearly revival meetings in our church.  For at least two weeks, everyone would gather each evening to hear a guest speaker.  (This was obviously before we had 68 TV channels and our kids were signed up for 8 different teams and life was so crazy that no one had time to attend an evening meeting!  But I digress…)  One of the key things that happened in those meetings each year, or so it seemed to me, was that at some point the speaker would ask a question to the effect of “Is God calling you to be a leader in His Kingdom?”

Why I remember that is that it was in one of those meetings that I said “Yes” to that question and that response has been a deciding factor in my life ever since.

Another thing I remember was Sunday School. (I know, I am REALLY dating myself here!!)   

Regularly, or maybe it would be more accurate to say yearly, the question of God’s call on the life of the student for leadership would come up as part of the lesson.

Thirdly, I remember youth rallies and youth retreats where it seemed that on a fairly regular basis the call of God and the challenge of being open to God’s call to be a leader in the church came up – often with a specific altar call to dedicate oneself to being open to God’s call to be a leader in His work.

These events shaped my life.

Today we don’t have revival meetings, Sunday School is old school and has all but disappeared from the life of the church, and I admit to not having been at a youth rally for a while to know if the call to be open to hearing God’s call to His service is even mentioned.

So, where do we expect leaders to come from? 

I sometimes hear people decry the religious educational institutions of our time for producing less Church Leaders.  But that is a false charge, because they only can graduate the people we send to them.  And if we don’t send young people who are to identified by local churches and pastors as called to ministry, who can they graduate and how can they graduate church leaders?  It is a very hypocritical charge on our part I believe.

I challenge Youth Pastors often to look for the kids in their youth groups that they feel God’s hand might be on for leadership.  But I am often amazed at many times how few they can name that they feel God might be calling.  I have not in many years heard a Pastor on a Sunday make the call for people who might be hearing God’s voice calling them to leadership to take that step of faith.  And as we met in the Leadership Think Tank, it became clear that while there is a place for us at a district level to have a strategy for walking with and developing our future leaders, the real leadership recruitment issues must be owned by the leaders of spiritual communities, pastors, youth leaders and teachers.  Ultimately they are the front line recruiters that will have he most impact of the development of future leaders.

What would change about the way we as today’s Church leaders talk to and deal with people day by day if a part of our prayers included the ask that God would open our eyes to future leaders that He already has His hand on?  And what if our prayers included a commitment to be open to helping give that needed nudge, an encouraging word, or even our commitment to mentor and help them grow in the faith?

I believe with all my heart that God desperately wants to answer that prayer in and through each of us.

That’s where our very best future leaders would come from, is my guess.

I Am – or am I?

Part of my Bible reading commitment for 2012 is reading through the bible at least twice.  I decided to do that by following two different daily reading-through-the-bible plans.  One is an Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs daily reading plan and the other is a Chronological daily plan that will go through the bible in a year.

Within a few days of each other both plans came to the Exodus passage where God confronts Moses and tells him that when people ask who sent him, he is to tell them “I am who I am” (or I am that I am in another translation).

That made me do some thinking about the idea that it is God who is “I am.”

So, what exactly am I saying when I claim something like “I am not going to do that!” or “I am not going to go there!”?  I heard a friend not long ago state, “I am a lifetime youth pastor, and will never be anything but that.”  Now, that may be true, but it got me to wondering if I have the right to say that kind of thing.  If I am a servant of God, am I not putting myself in the place of God making a statement like that?  Could it be that the “I am” is my saying that I want to be the Lord of my life, that I might not be open to what God has in store for me?  Might that in fact be a kind of idolatry on my part?

It is one thing to say “I am a child of God” and quite another thing to say “I am never going to accept a call to pastor a church in Hawaii!” (Not that I would ever say that exactly – but substitute “downtown Toronto” or “Fort McMurray” or “out in the middle of nowhere Saskatchewan” or some not-so-friendly foreign nation, and you might be closer to the truth.)  When I make that kind of statement, then I am saying in effect that I am choosing to be the God over my life and my life’s direction.  And that would be plain and clear idolatry – putting anyone or anything in God rightful place.

My task, I realize, is to let the real “I AM” be my “I am.”